A key challenge facing IoT developers and adopters is the complexity inherent in creating and managing IoT applications. IoT platforms are software and services that reduce this complexity by abstracting away from developers and users many of the horizontal features and functionality common to IoT applications across a range of use cases and verticals. However, there are hundreds of IoT platform vendors currently. This intelligence service sizes and forecasts the IoT platform market, and provides an assessment of the strategic issues and trends impacting the market.

Most automakers today have either kept their telematics service management in-house, or integrated it into their organization at a corporate level. However, the connected car market is changing rapidly, which is presenting exciting new opportunities for merchant-market connected-car platform vendors – enabling beneficial new service possibilities for drivers and passengers, alike.

Market forecasts of the cumulative volume of devices under management by IoT platforms and the resulting annual platform service revenue. These forecasts are global in scope, segmented by region, platform type, and device type, and cover the period from 2015 to 2030.

This scorecard report examines nine key platform vendors based on IHS Markit’s assessment of these vendors’ market opportunity. While there are currently hundreds of IoT platforms vendors, IHS Markit has chosen these nine companies as representative of key strategic approaches taken by many vendors in the overall IoT platforms market.

This report provides an assessment of the global market opportunity for the Internet of Things (IoT) platforms market segment known as “Application Enablement Platforms” (AEPs). IHS Markit developed this report from June 2018 through August 2018.

On 15 October 2018, Arm and Intel announced that Arm would adopt Intel’s Secure Device Onboarding (SDO) technology as part of Arm’s Pelion IoT platform. This collaboration should facilitate IoT market growth by reducing complexity and risk in the device supply chain. Both Arm and Intel benefit from partnering, though Intel gains a more important strategic win by shoring up the relevance of the Intel x86 chip architecture for IoT applications in the face of the increasing traction of Arm’s Cortex-M and Cortex-A architectures in the IoT market.

While GE’s challenges are specific to the company, and not reflective of any negative trends in the wider IIoT platforms market, there is a question in the market as to whether traditional industrial equipment vendors are optimally-positioned to compete in providing IIoT platforms.

On 2 August 2018, Arm announced the acquisition of data management firm Treasure Data and the launch/re-branding of its IoT platform as “Pelion”. It reportedly acquired Mountain View, CA-based Treasure Data for about $600 million, making it one of the largest acquisitions in Arm’s history. At a time when the large, diverse IoT platform vendor landscape is slowly starting to consolidate, and many vendors are starting to focus more narrowly on the areas where they can differentiate, Arm is taking a contrarian approach by going full-stack, and broadly-horizontal.

This market report provides a concise assessment the global market opportunity for Internet of Things (IoT) platforms used to enable smart city operations. Throughout the report we use the term “smart city platforms” rather than “IoT platforms for smart cities”. IHS Markit defines IoT platforms in general as software and supporting services that help customers to build IoT applications and manage IoT connections, devices, and data. IoT platforms abstract common complexities away from the customer and enable the customer to focus on their unique value proposition.

Arm has acquired Stream Technologies and will add the company to Arm’s IoT Service Group to extend the Mbed Device Management Platform with connectivity services/service management capabilities. Arm acquired Stream Technologies primarily to further Arm’s end-to-end connectivity and device management platform that helps organizations manage the complexity of connecting hundreds of billions of future IoT devices. The acquisition enhances Arm’s strategic positioning in the IoT market, provided that Arm can successfully execute on leveraging the potential synergies between Arm’s resources and Stream Technologies’ technical capabilities.

This report provides a brief overview of the IoT platform market. First, we describe the foundational need for IoT platforms, then define precisely what we mean by “IoT platform.” Second, we delve into several strategic issues and trends impacting the IoT platform market, such as vendor fragmentation, AI and edge computing, and cybersecurity.